Author of three books. This blog not very active so follow on Twitter: @gary_weiss

Monday, October 24, 2011

Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne Defies Court Order

Conspitracy theorist/fantasist Mark Mitchell, Deep Capture blog

The libel suit against Overstock.com CEO Patrick Byrne is getting more interesting by the moment. Yesterday I pointed out that Byrne posted a message on a bulletin board implying that the defendant in the case, a Canadian stock promoter named Ali Nazerali, was a criminal.

Now it emerges that, by so doing, Byrne defied a court order, issued by the court last week, prohibiting him from making statements about Nazerali anywhere on the Internet. See the summary above, from the British Columbia courts website. The injunction prohibits Byrne from making comments about Nazerali at his Deep Capture libel factory "or elsewhere."

Here, see for yourself (people getting this blog via email will need to click on the hyperlink):

Other interesting details from the order: the domain name cannot be transferred, and Google is not supposed to include Deep Capture in search results, which so far hasn't happened.

This would be pretty draconian if it happened to a journalistic organization. But Deep Capture is a corporate p.r. outfit, as the Society of Business Editors and Writers pointed out in a letter to Byrne (see below), proudly posted on Deep Capture.

I don't think Byrne understands that this is not the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is investigating him for financial fraud, or the Oakland court where Overstock is on trial for consumer fraud. This is a Canadian court where a resident of Canada has filed suit against him for making stuff up. Behavior like this is called "contempt of court." But even that isn't quite as important as the malice and recklessness that it demonstrates.

And just think: this costly legal mess originated because Mark Mitchell, the disgraced former journalist working for Byrne, recycled some old stories about Nazerali -- without attribution or credit -- and embellished them. Darned if I know why Columbia Journalism Review dispensed with his services.

Links to this post:

About Me

I'm a journalist and author. My latest book is AYN RAND NATION: The Hidden Struggle for America's Soul (St. Martin's Press: Feb. 28, 2012). My previous books were Wall Street Versus America (Portfolio: 2006) and Born to Steal (Warner Books: 2003). I was an investigative reporter and Wall Street writer for BusinessWeek, a contributing editor at Condé Nast Portfolio, and have written for the Daily Beast, Parade magazine, Salon, The Street.com, Fortune.com, Barron's and many other publications. I was an adjunct professor at Columbia University's School of Journalism. Follow me on Twitter @gary_weiss Email: garyweiss dot email at gmail dot com